UKOUG Oracle Conference agenda now out September 5, 2011

I just wanted to drop a quick post to say that the agenda for the UKOUG annual conference is now out. You can check out the schedule here.

They seem to have dropped the TEBS (Technical and E-Buisiness Suite) out of the title, I think because last year the UKOUG staff kept getting asked if it was the annual Oracle conference they knew and loved from prior years. And of course it is. (Other “application” sides of the Oracle world, like JD Edwards and PeopleSoft, have their own dedicated, named UKOUG conferences).

There is also a return of the Sunday OakTable stream. For those who have not come across it before, it is a chance to see some presentations by members of the OakTable in a smaller and more accessible room. ie you feel better able to ask the presenters awkward questions :-).
I’m not sure of the exact details of registering for this part of the event but the agenda shows the talks that are happening (in fact, if you click on the “view the full 2011 agenda” icon on the agenda home page, it shows Sunday by default). I managed to get along to the OakTable Sunday a few years ago and loved it – I’ll be on the opposite side this time, I’m priviledged to have been asked to fill one of the slots.

As ever, the conference has a massive and wide-ranging agenda, with mini-streams like EXA(data/logic) and MySQL on Monday,APEX on Wednesday… The number of papers and the general quality that are submitted to the conference goes up and up each year and a lot of effort goes into not just picking well know speakers but also a mix of new presenters and ensuring topics get covered. It’s hard, but during the selection process sometimes there are 4 or 5 talks we know are going to be excellent but are all on the same or similar topic – some have to be dropped to ensure the breadth of topics is still covered. The number of slots a single person is allowed to have is also controlled, again to maintain space for a wide range of presenters and presentations. All in all, it is not a simple task and even now some tweaks are going on (to fill topic gaps, finalise the exact scope for a talk or to allow for people who suddenly find they cannot present anymore). You can rest assured though that, all in all, it will be an excellent conference.